Your Burning Questions: How Do I Twitter?

For optimal Twitter success, tune into your audience and figure out when they're online.

Dr. Olya Zahrebelny (@TheZGroupLLC) asks: When is the best time to Tweet for maximum impact and to reach the largest audience?

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What Our Editors Say

This is a fantastic question. Timing your Tweets is completely necessary, and while there is no perfect answer, there is data that suggest certain times of the day correlate to successful Tweeting.

Many practices’ social media strategy is to Tweet hourly, but according to a study from Buffer Social, those Tweets might be better put to use during peak traffic hours.

What times of the day do YOU tend to venture onto Twitter? Chances are you’re using social media in your down time, and perhaps unsurprisingly, so are your patients and clients. Here are the highlights from Buffer Social’s data set:

·Early morning before work, Tweets are shown to receive the most clicks

·After hours, meaning 5 p.m. to 11 p.m., yield the highest favorites and retweets

·Lunch time, or noon to 1 p.m., is the most popular time to Tweet. But don’t be mistaken — “popular” in this case means the highest volume of Tweets, so whatever you put out will quickly get pushed down your followers’ feeds.

Of course, the results of the study differ greatly depending on time zone and audience. But for the most part, U.S. Twitter users take advantage of their break times and before- and after-work hours to hang out on the platform. Twitter has a helpful analytics tool to help you figure out your unique audience.

Based on our own analytics, Tweeting too much can actually hurt your results. We find we have the most success Tweeting about once an hour from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and then 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

What you Tweet and how much you interact with your followers is a big part of finding success on Twitter. Consumers are exceptionally wary of promotional techniques, so if you only produce generic, rushed Tweets that are blatant attempts to advertise, you will quickly find yourself losing followers. Be personable and speak directly to your audience!

Tweeting is just a small fraction of what you should be doing to optimize your business success. Check out our article on blogging to find out more about content creation.

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